Introduction
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the Driven World!
I’m so excited you’ve picked up this book! Blaze is a book based on the world I created in my New York Times bestselling Driven Series. While I may be finished writing this series (for now), various authors have signed on to keep them going. They will be bringing you all-new stories in the world you know while allowing you to revisit the characters you love.
This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I allowed them to use the world I created and may have assisted in some of the plotting, I took no part in the writing or editing of the story. All praise can be directed their way.
I truly hope you enjoy Blaze. If you’re interested in finding more authors who have written in the KB Worlds, you can visit www.kbworlds.com.
Thank you for supporting the writers in this project and me.
Happy Reading,
K. Bromberg
Note from the author: On any given day in the United States, there are approximately 440,000 children living in foster care. In 2017, 9 out of every 1000 of these children were victims of abuse or neglect. Fifty percent of these children will never graduate or receive their GED. About fifteen percent will actually attend college, and of those, fewer than three percent will get a college degree. Twenty-five percent suffer from PTSD as well as high rates of depression and low self-esteem. After “aging out” of the system, twenty-five percent of foster teens experience being homeless at least once.
Want to help? Be a voice. Find out more statistics and ways to donate here: https://www.speakupnow.org/
I never saw Sugar—that’s what my mother insisted on being called—without a cigarette dangling between her fingers. Sometimes, she never even smoked them. She just held them there, letting the ashes fall to the ground along with the seconds of her miserable life.
That’s the memory my mother left me with.
She’s been dead ten years, but I can still smell the cigarette smoke, the stale, white haze that crept over my skin and into the air in my lungs. It’s always there, the stench. Like a creep on the subway that stands too close and breathes in your face. Entitled and unwanted.
Within moments, I’m expected to stand on a stage in front of hundreds of influential people, important people, entitled people, and tell my life story. My story. I’m supposed to rip open my chest and bleed out into a room full of complete strangers in hopes that they’ll open their checkbooks. What’s the going rate for a woman’s soul these days? Ten thousand? Maybe fifty if I really sell it. Who knew the little girl who once slept on the floorboard of a rusted minivan with nothing but a bath towel to keep her warm would be the guest of honor at one of Florida’s top resorts?
I fidget with the hem of my soft pink pencil skirt and shift uncomfortably in my chair while Kai, one of the chairmen of our foundation, addresses the crowd. I have no idea what he’s saying. I can’t hear him over the pulse pounding in my ears. Random words float across the stage followed by collective laughter from the group of guests seated at their round, linen-covered tables.
Before tonight’s gala, my boss gave me a list of things to cover, bullet points designed to tug at the heartstrings.
What drew you to Corporate Cares?
What is it about helping foster children that means so much to you?
How can your past help someone else’s future?
For the company, it feels like a marketing strategy, a brilliant, creative ploy to solidify our cause. After all, who knows the system better than someone who grew up in the guts of it? For me, it feels like ripping the stitches off a wound I spent my entire life sewing up tight.
The sound of applause lulls me out of my trance. I glance at the podium where Kai is smiling at me affectionately. He gestures his hand toward the microphone, offering me the stage. He must’ve introduced me already. A pang of guilt twists at my stomach that I missed it because he’s never been anything but supportive and encouraging. He knows I grew up in foster care, but that’s where his knowledge ends. It’s like asking someone where they’re from. They might say Texas or California, but that story about the time they toilet papered the neighbor’s house or didn’t make the city’s little league team stays hidden beneath the surface. Our pasts are not defined by a street number painted on a mailbox. It’s the experiences that make us who we are. Kai and this foundation have no idea what a milestone tonight is for me. They don’t know the pain and anguish that comes from sharing the details of a past that I’ve never shared with anyone, not one single person. Until this moment.
I approach the podium with a painted-on smile, giving my boss a hug before he takes his seat next to me on the stage. Then I nod to the guests, greeting them with the same smile. Cordial. Rehearsed. Solemn. I should have it down to a science. I’ve had ten years to practice it.
My eyes scan the group of social climbers with bleach-white teeth and diamond necklaces undoubtedly on loan from Tiffany’s or Cartier until I find him, the only person in this sea of strangers that matters. His copper gaze locks on mine, and my pulse races. I dig my heels into the carpet to keep from running to him. The black and white tuxedo fits him like a glove. These are his people. This is his world. He looks as though he hasn’t shaved in days, and I get it because I haven’t slept in days. My hands twitch with the need to reach out and touch his face, to feel each whisker beneath my fingertips. Then I remember he’s not mine to run to, not mine to touch. I’m not sure he ever was.
Heartache, like pain, slices through me, and the cigarette stench is back, accompanied by the memories of gravel crushing beneath bald car tires, the itch of bug-bitten legs and head lice, and the chill that comes from sleeping in an abandoned house with broken windows.
There’s an awkward silence in the room as some of the guests refold the cloth napkins in their laps while others clear their throats and adjust their posture. Hundreds of flawless faces stare at me as they wait for me to begin, but I only focus on one. He’s the reason I’m standing here ready to freely give the world the only piece of me it hasn’t stolen yet—my heart. When the people at Corporate Cares asked me to come to Florida and tell my story to help raise money for House of Hope, I immediately agreed. Not for the love of money, but for love itself. I’m here, sweaty palms and shaky breath, to try to save the one person who—I hope—can save me.
I take a deep breath and force myself out of my own head—the place where the silence is louder than any noise. The only way to get through this is to tell it as if it were someone else’s story, as an outsider looking in.
Here goes nothing.
“When I was six years old, my mother taught me how to distract the convenience store cashiers so she could shoplift. At eight years old, I learned how to pretend I was asleep when one of her boyfriends crawled in bed beside me and breathed his whiskey-drenched breath down my neck. By the time I was ten, I learned CPR—the hard way—when I found my mother passed out on the bathroom floor. When I was twelve, I walked out into the ocean and prayed the waves would take me under and never bring me back. Three days after my fourteenth birthday, my mother died.”
The formal banquet room is so quiet not even a single breath is heard. I close my eyes and hold my breath before I continue. I can’t look at him anymore. My heart can’t bear his judgment. When I open them again, he’s moved all the way to the front of the room, right in front of the stage. His solitary chair sits apart from all the other elaborate round tables. He looks at me, and the earth shatters.